Snowshoeing the Race of Spades bike trail | Snowshoe Trails | Kananaskis Outdoors Forum

Post edited 3:12 pm – February 22, 2011 by Bob Stebbins

On 14 February I wrote about snow shoeing the recently-created bike trails fanning out from the Station Flats day use area just off Highway 66. But how much snowshoeing actually occurs on them? Our trip up Race of Spades from east to west on 20 February provided some answers to this question. The eastern trail head of Race of Spades is found at the northwest corner of Diamond T Trail, with the trail itself heading uphill to the southwest. The first 300m or so were reasonably packed, a condition that ended abruptly, however, leaving us with a set of almost completely snowed-over tracks to follow from thereon. We persevered nonetheless, climbing 250m past numerous bike jumps to the high point at a cairn (on left) overlooking a ravine (GR588412). At this point the trail turns abruptly north along a ridge, descending over approximately 0.8k to a north-south trail that parallels Moose Mt. Road. Our intent was to make a loop of it by heading south on this latter trail and then east on Sulphur Springs Trail back to Station Flats. But, having no information about how well packed, if packed at all, the remaining trails would be, we turned back.

As observed earlier there are many new bike trails in this area, but those more remote from Station Flats may be less well traveled. Indeed, if fully snowed over, following them can be difficult, for they are not usually well-marked between trail heads.